


As the Sword

by ecotone



Category: Destiny (Video Game)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, assorted mentions of the crota fireteam, delves briefly into how the heck eris' eyes even work, set mid-taken king
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-01
Updated: 2017-01-01
Packaged: 2018-09-13 23:49:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9147433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ecotone/pseuds/ecotone
Summary: The Tower is too bright, oftentimes, and there are terrors yet lurking in the Hive's halls and corridors. Her work is not done.One day, though, it will be.





	

A pit is a pit is a pit. 

The Darkblade is dead, skull claimed as a prize, chitin stolen for use in some _weapon_. The circumstances were different, so different, from Vell Tarlowe’s fall, but the chords strike so similarly. Stronger Light, more experience, knowledge of the horrors of the Hive- the odds were stacked in _their_ favor, just as they were stacked against Eriana and her fireteam. 

Tarlowe, Tarlowe, strong and noble. A lion among sheep, Omar would tease- less so after Wei Ning’s death, though; everything lost a bit of its color after she fell- so courageous, even when he was staring up at Verok and her legion of Thrall. In another life, perhaps, Verok was never there, Alak-Hul long imprisoned, and all six of them made it into the Pit to face Crota and his God-sword. _Six Guardians, unbroken, residing on an Oversoul Throne…_

Eris shakes her head, clucks her tongue. The whispers are silent, at least, the orb in her hands doing little more than glow a sickly green light. _Rock,_ she thinks sharply, sending a wave of admonishment towards Cayde. His jaws lights flicker nervously as he chats with Zavala, elbows resting on the table in front of him. 

The strike team will be back from the Dreadnaught’s depths soon, though she doubts they will come speak with her. She is odd, disconcerting, three eyes carved into a space meant for two. These new Guardians care little about what happened before they came; each mission will be completed, they think, and their spoils will be idolized. It is better, she supposes, than it used to be. _A new Golden Age._ How ironic that Eriana-3, the one who burned the brightest and the most radiant of them all, is not here to see it. Dead on the moon with the ones she loved, but still miles away from Wei. 

She sighs, sets her things on the table, leaves her station and moves quietly up the stairs. Since Oryx fell, finally, few people stop by to see her. The Guardians can wait, and Ikora knows where to find her. Shards pile up on her shelves, useless. There is new quarry to hunt, now. 

The Tower is dim, night slowly seeping in. A few Guardians wander about, bright flashes of color and bits of Bond-light. They are sure in where they are and what they’re here to do, except for the occasional new Hunter or Titan or Warlock, skittering about in shabby white. Seeing new Light is slowly becoming more uncommon, even here; when there is a new Guardian, though, the Light is _blinding._ An acolyte’s eyes are meant for the dark, and the dark is where Eris spent years. Her eyes, the ones that are hers only by right and proxy, seek out Light like a moth to an open flame. She hisses quietly as she looks askew at a freshly-reborn Striker, turning away as her blindfold grows so hot she thinks it will light itself ablaze. She thinks she caught a strip of purple skin; an Awoken, then, reborn not once but twice. 

Being reborn dozens of times is not something this newest Guardian can yet boast of, though. It will be a while before they can boast of anything, in all actuality; they missed most of this Age’s excitement, if only by a few years. A disappointing thing, for them, one with a mind still so full of yearning for glory it’s almost blinding. Eris wonders what any of the dead still being found at Mare Imbrium would have given to stay corpses for a few more years. All of Luna was a battleground, wherever Crota appeared, a pit. 

A Guardian laughs and it sounds like the shriek of a Thrall who’s found an untouched meal deep in the recesses of the Hellmouth. Eris shudders. She climbs the stairs that lead to the upper tiers and balconies, intent on getting to one of her many hiding places. Shadows bend around her in the late evening sun, the only trace of her the black that drips to the floor every few yards. In the bone-littered halls deep below the surface of the Moon, it was indistinguishable from the general filth. Here, it’s black spots on pristine white tile.

Eris jumps the small railing that divides the balcony from the sharp drop to the City below, still as nimble as she was in her Hunter days, settling on the small jut of wall a few feet away. She thinks of jumping down, like Eriana used to do, testing _how fast will we fall_ and _the aerodynamics of an Exo in Radiance_ and _come on, Vell, it’s fun!_ She’d done it, years ago, felt the drop and the wind making her long cape billow out behind her, Omar laughing as he twisted his hand through it to get a good hold. The firm thud of a body hitting the flat ground- always flat, the City had learned long ago to not build too close to the Tower- the momentary dark, awakening to a concerned Ghost, one turned annoyed after the fifth time, or a grinning friend, or a slightly horrified City-goer. There’s no Ghost to revive her now, though, no Light to stitch her bones back together. 

With a thin smile that shines sick and bitter, Eris debates what would happen to her eyes if a passing Ghost resurrected her. Would they morph back to her old ones, a warm brown that was still so much lighter than Sai’s, which shone almost black? Would her third eye close, fall out, cease to exist? It would hurt, certainly, not that she cares; she carved out her own eyes and replaced them with the ones from a still-fighting Acolyte. A revenge, of sorts, one of the countless little ones she’d had in the Pit, biding her time. Years of hiding and scavenging turned silent rebellion. 

Habits born from survival stick. One of the easiest ways to intimidate a smart-talking Warlock is to take a bite out of the wormspore they’re turning in. She thinks she can hear Omar and Sai snicker whenever she does it, the three finding a quiet camaraderie in their shared class, the inherent snark in a disgusting surprise. It’s nothing she hasn’t eaten; after so many years, her stomach still expects some amount of wormspore, not food. No amount of fresh fruit will change that, not for years. 

Three ships approach from afar, one flying the sparkling seal of the Queen’s Wrath. It’s the ship that had caught Eris’ eye when the strike team was departing; such vessels were rare, treasures from the Reef and its emissaries. The heroes of this particular story return, then, valiant and bright. She would be more resentful if she was not so _tired._

The ships fade from view as they approach the landing bay. Eris thinks of retreating to her own ship, the one she received after the Cayde Incident, an old jumpship that Amanda had scrounged up. It is not inviting, but neither is the Tower, most of the time. 

(A deep part of her whispers, _go back, back to the Pit, back to where the only ones who truly knew you fell. Go, and die, and feed those who would subdue you._ She ignores it, wishes she could die one more time, if only to dig that voice out of her chest, out of her head.) 

Instead, she sighs, leans against the wall. The Traveler can see her, here, and she can see it. When she first arrived, back in the fresh air for the first time in what felt like a century, it had unsettled her, its Light terrifying in the face of her own unease. Now, she observes it, and it looks down on all of them. 

The glow tugs at her eyes, and she wants to look away and reach for it and she wants to fall and she wants to get up or maybe not and she _wants-_

She wants to rest, for now. Maybe that will be enough. 

(For those on the Moon, for those she left behind, the ones she led and followed and lived for, she hopes they are resting easy, too. At the very least, they deserve that.)

**Author's Note:**

> Happy New Year! Here's hoping 2017 will be better than 2016 ever was. 
> 
> This was written back in October, but I figured it was worth finishing up and posting. As always, thank you for reading! :)


End file.
